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Joseph Pucci has research interests in late antiquity, late Latin, medieval Latin, and comparative literary history with a focus on literary allusion and poetic genres. He also has interests in biography as a literary form (and as practitioner) and in literature and the American presidency.

Biography

Joseph Pucci is Associate Professor of Classics and in the Program in Medieval Studies and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown, where he teaches courses on classical and medieval Latin, versions of literary selfhood in late antique and early medieval literature, and the transition from the late antique to the medieval. He has published over 60 articles, book chapters, and book reviews on Latin literary culture, and is the author of four books: Augustine's Virgilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014); Venantius Fortunatus: Poems To Friends, A Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Hackett, 2010); The Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition (Yale, 1998; paperback version, 2012); and the second edition of K. P. Harrington, Medieval Latin (Chicago, 1997). A fifth book, Recuperating Virgil: Reading the Auctores in Augustine's Confessions is now completed (2014).

Interests: Late Antiquity; Late Latin; Medieval Latin; Comparative Literary History; Biography; Literature and the American Presidency

Books: Medieval Latin, Second Edition (Chicago, 1997); The Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition (1998; paperback, 2012); Venantius Fortunatus: Poems To Friends, A Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Hackett, 2010); Augustine's Virgilian Retreat: Reading the Auctores at Cassiciacum (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014).

In Progress: Alcuin: Selected Poems and Letters: A Translation with Commentary (Medieval Texts in Translation, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies); The Living Past: Recasting the Ancients in Late Latin Poetry (Universitätsverlag Winter), co-editor; an interpretation of Ausonius' poetry; a biography of Alcuin; a study of Lincoln's use of scripture.

Awards: Princeton Review: One of the Top 300 Professors in the U.S., 2012; Karen T. Romer Award for Undergraduate Advising and Mentoring, 2004; John Rowe Workman Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities (1996); Award for Outstanding Academic Advising, Undergraduate Council of Students (1998, 1999, 2001; 2013).

Interests

He is a comparative literary historian with interests especially in ancient and medieval Latin poetry, though he also works in prose (Augustine, Alcuin, Anselm, Abelard). He has investigated the phenomenon of allusion in Western tradition and has forthcoming a book, Reading Virgil at Cassiciacum that studies Augustine's dialogues as statement on the ways to read pagan literature. This book is the first of three books focusing on Augustine's Christian humanism. The second volume, now complete in draft, is entitled Revisiting Virgil: Augustine and the Aeneid from Cassiciacum to the Confessions. It examines in light of the dialogues Augustine's complicated engagement of classical Rome's greatest poem. The third volume, currently under review, is entitled Recuperating Virgil: Reading the Auctores in Augustine's Confessions. It examines Augustine's classical borrowings in the autobiographical portion of the Confessions. His translation of the personal poetry of Venantius Fortunatus was published in 2010 as Venantius Fortunatus: Poems to Friends, A Translation with Introduction and Commentary. His current project is a translation of a selection of Alcuin's letters and poems, entitled Alcuin: Selected Poems and Letters: A Translation with Commentary, that will be placed in the Medieval Sources in Translation series of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. A co-edited volume, The Living Past: Recasting the Ancients in Late Latin Poetry, is in press at Winter Verlag. Further afield, he has longer-term plans to investigate the Greco-Roman heroic ideal in early presidential biographies, such as Mason Weems' Life of Washington, and to study Lincoln's speaking style.

Awards

Named one of the "Best 300 Professors in the United States" by the Princeton Review

John Rowe Workman Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Humanities, Brown University, 1996

Affiliations

Medieval Latin Association of North America

American Philological Association

Medieval Academy of America

Medieval Latin Studies Group

Classical Association of New England

Modern Language Association

Funded Research

Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, Award to support the conference, Late Literature in the Sixth Century: East and West (2013) and the conference, The Classics Renewed: A Bicoastal Conference on the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity (2011); Awards on the Marshall Woods Lectureship Fund, Brown University, 2011, 2013, to also support these conferences; Curricular Development Grant, Brown University, 1993,2008; Odyssey Grant, Brown University, 1997; Wayland Collegium Course Grant, 1992; Award on the Charles Cover Lectureships Fund, Brown University, 1991.